Understated Kiwis
After she reached the Travers River Bridge, Andrea took one horrified look up at the featureless rocky bowl that towered above–no real trail, just orange poles every few hundred yards to mark the way–and asked our Kiwi guide, Gary, “Just what are my options at this point?” “Well, you could walk back down to the
And the Southern Cross
January 2016, at a sheep station on New Zealand’s South Island. I pitched our tent yesterday on a grassy hilltop just yards from the shoreline of Lake Pukaki; we had a marvelous view of snow covered Mt. Cook a few miles north. Rain was forecast last night, but though the cloud cover was heavy and
Life and Teaching: Searching for the Mystic in the High Sierras
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] pulled our dirty gray Subaru into the Mosquito Flat parking lot at about 3:00 in the afternoon. We’d driven up from San Diego, and the plan was a quick backpack trip of just three or four days. Our packs were stashed in the back of the Subaru; mine held the tent and rain-fly, down
The Torrents of Spring—Attenuated and Abbreviated in 2015
Nature can create a drought, but only government can create a water shortage. ~ Anonymous I’m sitting at the edge of Thousand Island lake; it’s the 28th of May, 2015 a few minutes after noon on a clear and sunny spring day. The lake is largely frozen over and just beyond its white and splintered
Wild!
Is this the face that launched a thousand hiker’s boots? Spoiler alert: I might spoil the ending of the book and movie Wild here. If you don’t want to know about the endings, I suggest you skip this. Last year I bought the Kindle version of Cheryl Strayed’s book, Wild. Much as I admired her
Money, Gold and Promises
Hyperbole: Extravagant exaggeration; language that describes something as better (or worse) than it actually is. (Merriam Webster) In August, 1904, two men were crouched on the desert ground in semi-darkness before dawn. They held their hands over a small campfire to warm themselves. The morning breeze smelled of the heat that would come later, when
Lines written a few miles above Walter’s Wiggles
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here’s no accounting for the passage of time. Clocks and calendars while seeming to measure the flow of moments or years or lifetimes, aren’t really up to the task. How can 600 pages torn from faded calendars explain why some fifty year-old memories seem as fresh to me as last week’s? How can a canyon
Got (RAW) Milk?
I grew up on whole, raw, unpasteurized, non-homogenized, unaltered milk fresh from our organic pasture-fed herd of Guernsey cows. Now, to be fair, the word “organic” wasn’t thrown around back in those days, but we did not use any herbicides, pesticides, or artificial fertilizer on our pastures, so I think our green meadows qualified. You
The Cutest Grandbaby in the World
[dropcap3]F[/dropcap3]or years I’ve seen those ubiquitous—at least in our more senior neighborhoods—bumper stickers urging everyone to, “Ask me about my grandchildren!” Sure. Fine. Maybe I will. Or not. Until little Esmee came along. My youngest, Scott, a child of California suburbia, earned his master’s degree in music from the New England Conservatory (NEC), in Boston.
The Pacific Crest Trail in a Dry Year
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] boy of about twenty, with a substantial pack and good hiking boots, long pants and dusty T-shirt stood at the Cienega Junction on the PCT. He was studying a small map with far too few details; his face looked drawn and was as gray and dusty as his clothes. Andrea and I had been
